Cut Out All the Ropes
by sunsetdreamer
Summary: One ficlet per day, ending May 16. Because friends don't let friends leave fandom without a fight.
1. Chapter 1

**The Author's Note/Explanation: ***waves somewhat shyly* Hey, people. Bones enthusiasm is down a little, and I've been experiencing a bit of a wane myself, both writing and reading wise. I work pretty much full time and I'm a full time student, so my life has been a giant juggling act as of late and I just haven't had the time for much else. However, it's come to my attention in the last few weeks that I'm possibly on the brink of losing a few of the girls I've become quite close to in fandom. Forever. They've tried to assure me otherwise, but my heart is a little broken nonetheless and this new project is a selfish, shameless, last ditched attempt to remind them how much they love it here.

**The Breakdown/Rules of Engagement: **So, here's the game plan, boys and girls; RositaLG has a birthday in one month less two days (I _could_ just say May 16, but I feel like it takes away from the sense of urgency). What I would like to do is post one little ficlet a day, probably 500 words or less (or more, if it gets away from me; who knows) until then. A birthday countdown of sorts, if you will. Just fun little things that aren't to be taken too seriously. I'm rusty, but I'd very much like to try.

What you guys are going to do (hopefully) is leave me the prompts. Today's is courtesy of Some1tookmyname – because I needed someone to get me going and she witnessed my epic Twitter meltdown over this whole situation – but the rest are all on you. Review, PM, Tweet, DM... pick your poison. RositaLG and Jenlovesbones don't know it yet, but every morning one of them will be responsible for making the selection. If you have a prompt idea/word/location/scenario, bribe them, blackmail them, hell, threaten their lives if you want. Remind them that it can be all fun and games in our little corner of the Bones world, and maybe convince them to stay.

* * *

**Day 1: Splitting Time, 50/50**

_And I am here still waiting  
Though I still have my doubts.  
I am damaged at best  
Like you've already figured out._

_**Broken, **__Lifehouse_

They take a step back soon after Brennan tells Booth that she's pregnant.

It's not intentional but the desire to be better to one another faces off against years of learned behaviour, and in the end it simply proves too easy to fall back into what is familiar.

In the moment, Booth is just so glad to have a reason for her slight distance and Brennan is so relieved to unload the burden of this secret and know that this will not be the thing that ruins them, there isn't room to feel much else. But the next day they're a little more polite. A little more guarded. The facts are, they are just beginning to rebuild the foundation of them; they haven't yet found their way back to a place where they can bicker and share their thoughts freely without fear of judgement or significant repercussion. Her pregnancy does not change the facts.

Over the next few weeks they function on a sliding scale of exhilaration and frustration; the good is _good_, and the not-so-good is better than what they have been, so they tuck the frustrations away inside themselves.

They've learned a lot from their mistakes, but problem solving in a constructive manner is a continuing work in progress.

On one of their good evenings, Booth watches Brennan from his kitchen doorway as she revises her next academic journal submission with the same merciless attacks of red pen she uses when grading the papers of her grad students. He can't see her face clearly from this angle, but he can imagine the deep furrow of her brow and the red bite marks on her bottom lip. Her legs are drawn up toward her chest, her work rests atop her knees, and her tea mug is balanced precariously between her quadriceps and her lower abdomen. He smiles as she blindly locates the mug and takes a sip, but instead of resting the cup back in the space created by her folded body, she extends her hand beyond the couch arm and lets go.

The sound of shattering ceramic pierces the air and Brennan startles before gasping and swearing softly. In the half second it takes her to recover and place her paper safely on the coffee table, Booth is kneeling on the ground, carefully gathering the broken pieces.

She glares at him accusingly. "Booth!"

"Are you being serious right now?" Booth pauses and shifts from his knees to balance on the balls of his feet. "You break a glass and spill all over the floor when I'm not even in the room, and it's my fault?"

"It's not you; it's your end table."

"What's wrong with my end table?"

Brennan joins him on the floor and reaches under the couch to retrieve the broken handle piece, then rolls her eyes when Booth nudges her hand away and picks it up himself. "There isn't anything _wrong _with it," she stands and heads into the kitchen for a cloth. "However, it is located on the opposite end of the couch to the end table in _my _apartment."

She returns to the living room and begins soaking up the liquid slowly spreading across the hardwood floor. Because she is so focused on her task, it takes her a moment to realise Booth has stopped trying to pick up the thin white flecks remaining on the floor and now stares at her with a goofy grin sitting lopsided on his face.

"Why are you smiling?" she frowns.

"I don't know, Bones. Maybe because you feel so at home here, for a minute there you actually thought you were in your own place."

"It was a reflex action, Booth. It's hardly something that warrants excitement."

"I still think it's nice."

"Well stop." Brennan's frown deepens and she pushes her hair out of her face. "I'm finding it very difficult to concentrate here."

The natural break in conversation following her words falls into a heavy silence.

"Do you want to go back to your place?" Booth asks hesitantly.

The words are polite. The tone is polite. Everything in his expression is polite. Still, Brennan can't help but feel as if he is testing her. And she can't quite tuck away the frustration this time.

"I just want to finish my paper, Booth," she says tiredly. "That's all."

He runs a hand over his face. "We need to figure this out."

The apartment battle has been fought silently up until this point; they both present their arguments, make their excuses, and the strongest one wins. He has Parker this weekend. Her place is closer. There's no bacon in her fridge. He's out of whole wheat bread. With Booth's words, however, there's no more room to pretend that this is working for them.

"We may as well just flip a coin," Brennan mutters. They've crossed over the line they've been skirting cautiously for weeks and quite frankly, it's refreshing to be a little snippy.

Booth's eyes narrow and he gets snippy too. "You know what? Why not. If you win, I give up my place. I win, you give up yours."

Brennan raises her eyebrows. "Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"That... does not seem like a very practical way to make this decision."

He takes a coin out of his pocket and gazes at her expectantly. "Call it, Bones."

She accepts the challenge, but as usual, it's on her terms. "I want to do it."

"What?"

"I want to do it. What if you cheat?"

"For crying out loud, Bones. I'm not going to cheat."

"Well neither am I, Booth."

"Fine. Here."

She takes the quarter and gets ready to throw it. "I'm heads."

"You can't flip _and _call, Bones. One or the other."

"Fine; you call."

"_Fine_."

There's another pause as they each wait for the other to end this obvious insanity, but after seconds tick by, Brennan's jaw clenches defiantly and she tosses the quarter above their heads.

Before she can catch it, Booth snatches it out of the air without ever taking his eyes away from hers.

"Hey!"

"This is beyond stupid."

"Because I was going to win?"

"No! Because we're not ten years old." His gaze turns piercing and she shifts slightly under the weight of it. "What do you want to do, Bones. Tell me what you want."

She knows it's irrational to keep both apartments. She knows shuffling the baby between two dwellings would be an unnecessary inconvenience and she knows that moving buildings is only going to become more difficult as her pregnancy progresses. But when she answers him, she's honest.

"I'm not ready to give up my apartment." The words tumble from her lips, and the world does not end. The rest of the words quickly follow suit before she can lose her nerve. "It's my home, Booth. It's been less than two months..."

Her voice trails off and her earnest expression asks him to understand.

"... it's my _home_."

He does understand. Because there's a doorway in this apartment that charts the growth of his son with charcoal and thin tipped marker. There's a wall that still displays the faint etchings of orange crayon despite his attempts to scrub it clean.

Life has thrown them a curveball, but they've always created their own rhythms and despite what Booth would like to believe, the conventional approach rarely works for them.

"We start by splitting time, then. Your place, my place. Fifty-fifty, huh?"

Brennan tilts her head. Eventually, her face relaxes and she smiles. "Fifty-fifty."

She likes the thought of this. Of equality and at last, the promise of some time to adjust. It's a temporary solution – and a flawed one, at that – but perhaps the next time this frustration comes to a head, they'll both be ready to make a different sort of change.

"Okay," she answers. And they're good again. For now. "Okay."


	2. Chapter 2

Guys. I am so, SO excited that you've jumped in on this idea. I just got home and I haven't responded to any of the awesome feedback/suggestions yet, but I'm writing down all the prompts as they come in and forwarding them on to RositaLG/Jenlovesbones in a super organised fashion. They are all in there and in reading them over, I've learned that you're all far more creative than I am, ha. Anyway, thank you for making this fun, and I hope you continue to get a kick out of it.

* * *

**Day 2: Booth. Brennan. Hockey. Bet.**

"That was very impressive."

Booth tossed a popcorn kernel in Brennan's direction and hit her with his usual precision, effectively punishing her for her musings. "Knock it _off_, will you?"

Her mouth opened in righteous indignation. "Do _not_ throw things at me."

"Then stop cheering for the wrong team!"

"From a kinetic standpoint, his actions _are _impressive, Booth. It's not cheering; it's a fact."

"It's hockey," Booth stated steadfastly. "Appreciate it in a non-squinty way, or watch in another room."

This was the third game in a row she had insisted on watching with him. The first time, Booth was touched by the thought that Brennan had simply wanted to spend the extra time together, even though watching sports – watching television in general – was far from her favourite activity. The second time, he was suspicious. This third time, Booth was downright wary. While he couldn't pinpoint why, she seemed hell bent on antagonising him.

"Angela thinks that number 17 is cute," Brennan spoke again.

Booth's jaw dropped. Just when he had all but convinced himself he was being paranoid, she went and said things like that. And he _knew _she was doing it on purpose.

And yet, he reacted just the same.

"_Kesler_?" he all but spat. "Now you're rooting for _Kesler_?"

"Well, Angela likes him."

"No one likes him. No one. Nobody likes Vancouver period except for Vancouver, but _especially, _no one likes him."

"They're going to win, you know. It's simple probability."

This wasn't news to Booth, but that didn't mean he appreciated her saying it aloud. "You don't know that."

"I would be willing to place a wager on it."

"Would you, now."

"Yes," Brennan nodded. "I would also be willing to bet against you seeing the end of this game."

Booth finally conceded defeat and made the inquiry he'd been _itching _to ask for three games now. "What are you doing, Bones? And why are you doing it?"

She shrugged. "Initially, I was conducting an experiment. I was trying to determine whether I find hockey sexually arousing as a whole, or whether the appeal lies strictly in _you _playing hockey."

It wasn't the answer he had been expecting. Booth was charming, eloquent when he wanted to be, and though he had long since accepted that she would always surprise him, her knack for rendering him speechless left him shaking his head almost every time.

"And your conclusion?"

He mentally applauded himself for sounding (mostly) casual.

Brennan didn't grace him with a verbal answer. She stood up and walked toward the doorway, stripping off her shirt without a glance behind her and letting it fall to the floor just before she disappeared into the hall.

Booth's eyes went from the empty space in the doorway to her discarded shirt, and back to the television. Then he shrugged and followed close behind, allowing his shirt to take residence with hers on their floor.

* * *

_Disclaimer: I don't hate Vancouver. Just Ryan Kesler. Don't be shy about the prompt giving! I'm not creative enough to think of 27 more ficlets on my own. And remember; if your prompt isn't chosen, don't lose heart! RositaLG responds to death threats. Keep on tryin'._


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 3: Brennan goes overboard buying Christmas/B-day gifts for Christine after she insists that Booth shouldn't. He finds out.**

The impulse dates back to when Christine is a newborn; from _before _she's born, to be (reluctantly) honest. In the months leading up to her daughter's birth, Brennan is still fighting to hang on to the part of herself that remains familiar amidst the life changes she and Booth are navigating at warp speed; it doesn't make _sense_ to buy every soft blanket that catches her eye. Every stuffed toy. Every heart stopping pair of impossibly tiny shoes.

Booth unwittingly makes it easier for her to keep the urge to buy entire stores under control, because he has a total _lack _of control in this department, and they tend to naturally balance one another out. Every time he comes home bearing a new article of baby paraphernalia that is either frivolous or something they already own in triplicate, the reprimand she gives him is a reminder to herself as well:

_She won't be old enough to appreciate that for months, Booth._

_Yes, Booth. They're very cute. But they are neither necessary nor practical._

There are variations of this mantra she repeats to herself in the months following Christine's birth, but in the week leading up to her daughter's third birthday, Brennan finds that all of her arguments have ceased to be effective. This year, Christine will be old enough to truly understand the significance of the celebration. She will be old enough to display excitement for the actual gifts as opposed to the large boxes and shiny wrapping that they are presented in.

Outwardly, Brennan's stance remains consistent. She leaves no room for argument when she vetoes Booth's bouncing castle suggestion. And his bicycle suggestion. When he mentions a pony, she's mostly sure he's kidding, but she's so frustrated by that point she gets up and walks away from the conversation just in case he's not.

Which is why - as Brennan sits cross legged on the floor of the deluxe playhouse she has just paid to have put together in their backyard - she knows he is never going to let this go.

She leans back on her hands and tilts her head toward the ceiling, inhaling the heady scent of new, finished wood and the tang of plastic furniture. In the hour that has passed since the workers left, she's been busy personalising the inside; a low table surrounded by four low chairs occupies one corner, a toy chest lies in another, and the telescope (another impulsive purchase) has been adjusted to peek easily out of one of the four child-sized windows.

She's even hung small curtains.

The sound of the screen door opening sends Brennan into a panic and she checks her watch; apparently, time passes as quickly while interior decorating as it does while examining remains at the lab.

"Bones?"

Booth's voice cuts off as he steps into the backyard, and she cringes.

"What the-

In a matter of seconds, the playhouse door swings open and Brennan's sheepish expression meets Booth's puzzled one.

"Hi, Booth."

"What _is _this?" He's surprised, but he's _Booth_, so he's quick to emit a boyish laugh and crouch down to enter through the hobbit sized door. Once he's sitting on the floor beside her, it hits him that they're a family member short. "Where's Christine?"

"At Angela's. Playing with Michael."

"I thought we were getting her a paint set. That's what you told me before I went to work."

"I know!" Brennan exclaims. "That was my intention when I entered the store. I don't know what happened."

"This is _so _a bigger deal than a bouncing castle."

She makes a lame attempt to justify her actions. "Christine's tree isn't big enough to support a tree house."

"So your solution was to buy her a real house?"

"It isn't _that_ big."

"Bones, how much did this cost?"

She grimaces. "I don't want to tell you."

"Bones-

"Seriously, Booth," she can't help the hint of a whine that creeps into her tone. "Please don't ask."

Booth chuckles again and draws her close, then he presses a firm kiss into her hair. "You're a good mom."

She relaxes into his touch. "Thanks, Booth."

"She's gonna love this."

Brennan finds herself suddenly and inexplicably nervous. "I hope so."

"And next year, Bones? I get to buy her that activity cart thing from Pottery Barn. Without any kind of protest on your part."

"I find that condition acceptable."


	4. Chapter 4

I rather foolishly thought that I could avoid this one because RositaLG is only picking prompts, not putting any in herself. Unfortunately, I forgot about Laffers. So thanks, Laffers, for putting this in the running for her. Really. You and I are going to have a talk later about what it means when I start a fic riot; you're supposed to be on my side by default. Thank you all for your continuing participation and support! As for the prompts, I've been informed that Jenlovesbones doesn't respond to death threats, but she's open to bribery. So there you go.

Bumped to a T rating for vague sexy times.

* * *

**Day 4: Prompt 1- Tie Smut, Prompt 2 - Church**

It was still fairly early when Booth arrived home after Sunday Mass, and he took in the sun on his walk up the drive feeling a little tired, but mostly refreshed. He and Bones had closed a case late the previous night, and both her and their daughter had been dead to the world when he had crept out of the house a few hours ago. When he stepped inside, however, he was greeted by the smell of coffee and the sound of soft steps in the kitchen, and he followed the noise.

"Hey, Bones."

She'd been up for a while; she was already dressed for the day and her hair was still slightly damp from the shower. And when she turned to face him, she opted to move forward and quickly grasp his belt instead of returning the greeting.

Whoa.

"I had a 'sex dream' – as you are so fond of putting it – last night," she informed him lowly. "You played a key role."

Booth chuckled even as he found himself reacting to her close proximity and her wandering hands. "Glad to hear it."

"It was quite displeasing to wake up lacking the means to re-enact it."

"Is that what I am to you? A prop?"

She ignored the quip and entangled the smooth silk of his tie in her fingers. "All things considered, however, I believe this works much better."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yes."

She tugged on his tie and he willingly followed the unspoken order to lean forward and kiss her soundly. "Christine..." he mumbled.

"She's sleeping," Brennan assured him, winding the tie around her hand until he couldn't have put space between them if he tried. "I don't think she has fully recovered from her cold."

"Better make it fast, then."

There were a few stumbles and missteps on their journey to the bedroom – easily attributed to Brennan's refusal to ease her grip on that damn tie – and they made a fair bit of noise reminding one another to be quiet, but eventually they found themselves in their room, no worse for wear.

Brennan unbuttoned his shirt and loosened the tie – though she made no move to take it off completely – and then stepped back to admire her work. "Yes. _Much _better."

Booth tried to guide them to the bed, but she resisted and pulled him forward until she was backed up against the nearest wall. "Here."

"You're being kind of bossy."

"It was my dream; you can be bossy when it's your dream."

Fuelled by the knowledge that the sun was rising higher in the sky and their window for privacy was quickly closing, Booth and Brennan used a host of learned intimate details to bring one another to quick release. And when they heard the door down the hall creak open only short minutes after they re-clothed themselves, Booth couldn't resist the urge to offer her a gleeful high five.

"Booth?" Brennan called over her shoulder as she opened the door. "Don't put away the tie, okay?"

He grinned and threw it onto a nearby chair before heading into the closet to change. "Got it."


	5. Chapter 5

This game is beginning to work against me. Here lies a Hannah prompt combo... I'm pretty sure I managed to get all of them in here.

* * *

**Day 5: Hannah. Hannah Hannah Hannah Hannah.**

The baby hasn't slept much in the last five days and Brennan has slept even less, and when Christine finally, _finally _drops off into a deep midevening sleep, she's tempted to crawl onto the couch and fall asleep as well. But she gets as far as unfolding the throw before she looks around her at the disaster that is currently her home, and she sighs before putting the blanket back.

Booth has been away for four days, and it will be two more before he returns. After how vehemently she had protested his attempt to get out of the training week, after how adamant she had been that she could survive without him for a mere six days, conceding defeat now, so close to the end, could not be an option.

But she's exhausted. It's the longest period of time she has had to care for her daughter entirely on her own, and while her baby possesses a generally happy disposition, it feels as if she hasn't stopped crying since the day prior to Booth's departure.

Brennan can't help but take it a little personally.

Booth has been nothing but helpful from the day they brought their daughter home and she appreciates it, but she has to believe that she can do this effectively without him. That she can succeed in this the way she has succeeded in most other things; extraordinarily. Especially when she plans on returning to work next week.

Christine yawns and stretches in her sleep, and the smile that twists Brennan's mouth is automatic in response. She carefully tucks all small limbs back into the carrier and begins gathering the tiny socks and onesies and rags that have taken over her living room into a manageable pile. She mentally prioritises; two loads of laundry, and then the garbage. By then it will be time to feed Christine again and maybe, _maybe_, they can both sleep afterward.

The first load of laundry goes in without issue, but as Brennan prepares to take out the garbage, she notes the paper mixed in with the trash and feels a stab of irritation for Booth and his inability to throw these things in the recycling bin located less than a step away. She glances at the baby – still sleeping soundly – and makes the risky decision to chance taking the time to sort the mess.

She isn't snooping. If the _Seeley _part hadn't caught her eye, she wouldn't have given any of the papers a second glance. And if Booth had put the goddamn thing in the recycling bin like he was _supposed _to, she wouldn't have seen it at all. (These are the things she tells herself afterward. When her daughter is busy not sleeping again and on top of feeling tired and useless she is also feeling exactly like the type of nosy, insecure woman she has always prided herself on _not _being) But once she gets a glimpse of her partner's name, penned in a feminine hand that is somehow familiar, she smoothes out the wrinkles and sits back on her heels.

_Seeley,_

_It didn't feel right to call, but-_

That's as far as she gets before she remembers where she's seen this handwriting before. On a sticky note left on her desk by her partner's girlfriend (_ex-_girlfriend, she reminds herself) inviting her out for after-work drinks. The events seem so far in the past as to have been a part of someone else's life entirely, and yet, she feels the uncomfortable memory of conflicted, suffocating emotion flood forward so vividly it stuns her.

Brennan skims the page until Christine's soft sigh brings her back to the present. She then crams the paper into the recycling with all the others and swiftly takes the bins out to the curb.

An hour later, the second load of laundry is in the wash and Christine is fed, but her hopes for sleep are not realised. Christine's cries are just beginning to pick up steam when Brennan hears her laptop ping in the other room, and remembers the Skype date she has with Booth. She considers ignoring the call, but she ultimately accepts it and tilts the screen so that she can stand and walk with the baby while they talk.

There's a brief waving of her free hand. "Hi."

"Hi," Booth returns with a smile.

He's pleased to see her, to see _them_, but seeing him and talking to him when he's too far away to help her deal with how very raw she feels right now, it's too much. When Christine continues to fuss and neither her voice nor Booth's can calm her, Brennan takes advantage of the excuse to end the call early.

"I'm gonna go, Booth. I'll text you when she's asleep."

* * *

Booth walks into the house and finds both his girls in the kitchen; the small one sleeping in her carrier atop the table, and the bigger one scrubbing the floor like she's trying to punish it.

"Hi, baby," he croons, rubbing the infant's belly gently. "Did you miss me?"

Brennan snaps to attention and points the cloth threateningly in his direction. "Booth, do not, do _not _wake her up."

He holds up his hands. "I wasn't! I was talking to you."

Brennan gets off the floor and smiles wanly as he turns on the charm. "I'm sorry, I just... she hasn't slept very much this week."

Booth cups her cheek. "What about you? When did you sleep?"

She averts her eyes and folds her arms over her chest. "Do you mind if I take a shower? I tried to have one this morning but then I thought it would be easier to just wait until you came home..."

"Yeah, Bones, of course. Go."

She starts to leave the room, but turns around in the doorway at the last second. "I'm glad you're home, Booth," she says sincerely. Because she's tired and she's still battling that general feeling of unsettlement which Hannah's letter has brought back to her, but she _is _relieved to have him home.

Before Booth can respond, she disappears from sight. He turns his attention back to the baby; Christine now stares up at him with bright, alert eyes and he rocks the carrier with a light hand.

"You were supposed to take it easy on mommy while I was gone," he chides softly. "We talked about this."

She waves a fist in response and Booth laughs. "Come on, pretty girl. You and me are gonna make dinner."

* * *

By the end of the night, Brennan's mind is still far away from him. He doesn't know how to bring her back. The slight distance he's felt in the last few days isn't the result of bad internet connections or the crying baby alone, and as she pushes the food around on her plate, he finds himself making yet another desperately transparent attempt at conversation.

"We're almost halfway through dinner and she hasn't woke up yet... that's a new record, huh?"

Brennan seems disoriented when she looks up. As if she's forgotten his presence.

"Yes," she answers eventually.

"Okay," he puts down his fork. "What's bothering you?"

"It's fine. It doesn't matter."

And it doesn't. Because she has Booth and they have Christine and Hannah is gone and they're happy. And the mess of emotions plaguing her are so irrational it makes her inwardly furious. But for two days, she's been alone with these thoughts and she can't box them away.

"Talk to me."

It's this that pushes her. Talk. They don't _talk_. Not about things like this.

"I found the letter Hannah sent you." Booth freezes and she nearly stops at that, but in the end, she continues on. "I found it... unsettling, to think about her. And now I find that I can't stop."

"I threw that away," Booth says carefully.

"In the garbage. I keep telling you to put paper in the recycling bin."

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"I knew you wouldn't," Brennan replies in that logical, all-knowing tone that gets his defences up. "You're the one who insisted you wanted to know."

"She saw that thing in the magazine about Christine; she just wanted to congratulate us. To say breaking up turned out to be a good thing, and she's glad we worked things out."

"She said _turning down your proposal _was a good thing."

He throws up his hands. "That's what I said. It's done, Bones. Why-

"Because it still _hurts_."

The words bubble up in her throat and come pouring past her lips before she can stop them. Before she can think about them. And while they are honest, while they are painfully vulnerable and exposing like rough sandpaper to her soft skin, while they would have most certainly eaten away her insides like acid if they had remained trapped within her, she wants to grab them back. Because the fact that something so revealing can come from her mouth without thought scares her. The fact that these moments of impulsive, thoughtless revelation are on the rise around Booth scares her even more.

And the dam breaks. For both of them.

"You told me there was only one person you love the most. You let me think... and then you asked her to marry you."

He doesn't like thinking about this. Because he knows that a lot of what happened toward the end of his relationship with Hannah had been a giant, messy mistake. But he can still remember the way it felt to be close to his partner one day and pushed away by her the next. To have her ask him to stay with her and then date his boss and run off to another country all in the span of a few months.

"You were hot and cold, Bones. I just wanted something _consistent_. And then in the car... if you had changed your mind again, if you got scared and took off, I wouldn't have made it. I couldn't have got over you twice. I think we both know I did a shit job of getting over you the _first_ time. I took a page out of your book and I made an ass-backward-logic decision, and it blew up on me the same way it always blows up on you."

Christine lets out a plaintive wail from the next room and Brennan wants to cry too. She feels a jolt of resentment, not for her daughter (_never _for her daughter) but for this situation that just does not allow for real argument or resolution. Ever.

"I'll get her."

"No, I can get her."

"I said I'll get her, Booth. That's a hungry cry; you can't be of much assistance in that department."

Booth watches her walk away and though it's for a good reason – the _best _reason – he's keyed up and annoyed by the fact that it seems like she _always _gets to be the one who leaves. But time passes and his blood settles, and when he notes that she's been gone for over half an hour, he climbs up the stairs after her.

He finds her in their bedroom, fast asleep on her back with one hand curled protectively around the baby sleeping on her chest.

With a sigh, he moves to the side of the bed and carefully lifts their daughter, but the loss of her weight causes Brennan to stir.

"I'm not sleeping," she mumbles.

He laughs softly in spite of himself. "It's okay. We can talk when you get up."

"I don't want to fight about this. It doesn't make sense."

Her words slur together as she fights to regain full consciousness. Booth sighs again and pulls the blanket around her. "Sleep."

"But-

"It's gonna sting sometimes, you know?" he shrugs. "But all the hard parts, they got us here. And here's pretty good. Anything else that comes up, we can handle it as a team."

"I like when you're optimistic; it's Booth-y," she murmurs with a half smile. "What do you propose we do next?"

"We stay," he says simply. "We stay because it's the only thing we haven't tried yet. We stay for this. For us."

"For Christine," she adds.

Booth shakes his head. "No, not for her. Kids know when their parents are together just for them." He thinks back to his own childhood and his mother's wistful glances toward the front door, and when Brennan looks like she may argue, he shakes his head again. "Trust me, Bones. 'For Christine' is never gonna be on the list of reasons we stay together."

She nods her understanding and blinks sleepily. "I do love you, Booth. And I know that you love me."

"Well there you go." He brushes the hair away from her face and kisses her forehead softly. "That's a pretty good start."


	6. Chapter 6

This chapter may fall flat-ish. I am not feeling particularly clever or fun at the moment. Also I have homework. Sadface.

* * *

**Day 6: Brennan feels Booth loads the dishwasher wrong. Bickering ensues.**

In the first months they spend shuffling between two apartments, Booth and Brennan each bring with them certain habits into the space of the other. Like introductions of invasive species into a habitat, these practices disturb the natural order of things and inconvenience (one time, even injure) the native party. Brennan trips over hockey sticks in her living room and Booth has an increasingly small space to claim as his in his own bathroom, but they had been so much _less _only a few months ago when they _hadn't _been tripping over hockey sticks and fighting for counter space, and it seems like a pretty small price to pay.

Until Brennan happens upon Booth starting her dishwasher.

"What are you doing?"

Booth freezes with his finger over the start button. "The dishes," he replies slowly.

Brennan frowns. "It can't possibly be full... I emptied it just this morning."

"Well it is."

"You're wasting water, Booth. Just wash them in the sink."

"It's _full_, Bones."

The frown deepens and she reaches around him, yanking the door open and revealing two trays that do indeed look full. But only because dishes are thrown in every which way without even an attempt to conserve space.

She stares at him incredulously and Booth prepares himself for a lecture, but instead, she shakes her head, pushes him out of her way and begins pulling the contents out and setting them on the counter.

"What are _you_ doing?"

"The same thing you were doing. Only, correctly."

"But-

"I've got it, Booth. Honestly, I'd rather just do it myself."

"Are you mad?"

"No."

"You seem mad."

"I'm not."

"Is this a hormone thing?"

He's teasing her, trying to goad her into starting the lecture he knows she wanted to give him, but Brennan only glares and slams a glass on the counter. "It's a _you don't listen_ thing."

He rolls his eyes. "It's not like you're so good with the listening either, Bones."

"What? I am a very good listener."

"You never put the cereal back where I like it," Booth points out.

"Well, you are too rough with the pages of books."

"You always forget to lock the door."

"Only when I'm home! And I hate that you don't organise your music alphabetically."

"I hate that you leave earrings lying all over my apartment. It's a hazard, Bones."

"Your soap dispenser is silly."

"That incense you burn makes me sneeze."

The accusations fly back and forth until they eventually run out of steam and stare at one another, wondering where it is they're supposed to go from here.

Eventually, Brennan simply turns back to the dishwasher. "Just let me show you one more time, Booth."

"God. Kill me now."

"Front to back by order of smallest to largest..."

By the time they find a place to call _their _place, Booth has learned how to be gentle with her books (sometimes) and Brennan has learned to lock the door (when she remembers).

But they still couldn't quite find a middle ground when it came to stacking the dishwasher.


	7. Chapter 7

Please note, lines may be misquoted due to the fact that my go-to Bones transcript site has mysteriously disappeared and I cannot find the DVD disc to save my life right now.

* * *

**Day 7: 3AM**

He drinks the tequila straight out of the bottle and it tastes like her mouth. He wonders if the memory will eat at him forever, or if she will fade in his mind until she is nothing more than a pretty face he almost knew.

"_I will __**never **__work with you again."_

There had been as much conviction in her words as there had been in the strength of her swing. His hand absently rubs at his jaw; he hasn't been slapped by a girl since college. He hasn't been slapped by a girl like _that_ since, well, ever.

The image of her storming out of his life sits in his mind beside his first glimpse of her in the lecture hall; he can't reconcile the two. The latter is full of radiance and magnetism while the former exudes nothing but... rage. Rage that he had brought out in her. And she had brought out in him.

He tries to remember the anger that had burned so brightly within him practically the entire time they had spent together today. He remembers the conversation with Gemma's mother, the way Brennan just _spoke _without any thought to consequence, and he can feel the simmering remnants of what she had provoked in him, but mostly, now, it's a hazy mess that can't be recalled with enough clarity to make sense of it.

A knock on the door interrupts his thoughts and he holds his breath, waiting for the person on the other side to give up and leave. When they don't, he does the mature thing; he answers the door instead of yelling 'fuck off' at the intruder the way he really, _really _wants to do.

He's not surprised by who it is. There's only one woman he knows who wouldn't think it odd to show up on his doorstep at this hour.

"What the hell are you doing here, Cam? It's three o'clock in the morning."

Cam steps around him, effectively inviting herself into the apartment. A smug smiles dances across her lips. "Well, I heard you got your ass handed to you by a scientist, Seeley. Not something that happens every day; I kind of want details."

"I'm tired, Camille."

"Oh come on! Don't be like that; I'm kidding." When she doesn't draw so much as a ghost of a smile from him, Cam sobers and her expression turns sympathetic. "She really got to you, didn't she?"

Booth sighs. "Yeah." He rubs a hand over his face and tries to forget her passion. Her brilliance. The colour of her eyes. "Yeah, she really did."

* * *

She can't sit still; she's been pacing since she left him at the Hoover. And she hates him. She _hates _him. She hates his arrogance. She hates his stupid shiny shoes. She hates the way he looks at her as if he knows her. As if he can see her. As if the reason he doesn't fear her (or at least fear her mind like so many others) is because he somehow knows the girl she used to be.

"_What are you, ten years old?"_

But more than anything, as she walks from one end of her apartment to the other and back again, she hates that even now, he's decimating her self control.

She replays their last moments and beneath all the anger she feels a twinge of... something. Something decidedly unpleasant. And it's been such a long time since she's experienced it, the emotion takes time to place. Guilt. She's a ball of flaming rage and yet, she can't shake the guilt she feels for striking him. She's never hit anyone who didn't absolutely have it coming and she thinks... she _knows_, somewhere inside herself, that Seeley Booth is not all bad.

She's doing another lap of the perimeter when she hears her phone ring in the adjoining room. Glancing at her watch and frowning, she heads toward the noise. And in her head she's quickly thinking of all the things she's going to say if the caller is one Special Agent Booth.

She breathes a sigh of relief when she reads the ID and quickly accepts the call.

"Brennan."

"Sweetie! Hi!"

Angela's voice slurs loudly in her ear, and still, Brennan can barely hear her over the music pounding in the background.

"Hello..."

"I'm sooo glad you're still up. I'm downtown; come meet me."

"What? No, Angela, I have overindulged in alcohol quite enough for one week, thank you."

"If you don't come, I'm going to assume that you and Agent Booth are doing the nasty. Right now."

Brennan actually takes the phone away from her ear to stare at it in confusion, as if expecting to find a button she can press on the device that would give sense to her friend's words. "I don't _want _to have sex with him; I don't want to see him ever again. I believe I was very clear on that."

"Then come. Please please please please. There are so many fine men, and I am just one woman."

Brennan laughs, and it's admittedly the best she has felt all day. In that moment, she's not thinking about his persistence. About his strength. About the way he stresses his 's's when he's nervous. "Okay," she agrees finally. "I'll take a cab."


	8. Chapter 8

IIII am realising right this moment that I must have skimmed for key words instead of reading the prompt as a whole when I started. Because this doesn't really meet all the parameters. Awkward. #ReadingFail

* * *

**Day 8: B&B have to distract themselves during a heat wave with a broken air conditioner**

It was four days into what all the weather networks were predicting to be a week long heat wave, and at this particular moment, Booth was hard-pressed to recall a single thing he liked about summer.

He left the comfortable temperature of his vehicle and braved the obnoxious heat as he made his way to the building entrance; then he stepped into a lobby that, at best, could be classified as marginally less unbearable. Judging by the angry mob forming, he concluded that the air conditioning had probably been out for a while, and he took the stairs up to Brennan's apartment. The idea of closing himself in a small, sweltering box just wasn't appealing.

"Hello?" he called automatically when he opened her door.

"Hi," Brennan returned.

Her voice sounded close, but when he didn't immediately sport her, Booth took another few steps forward. "Where are y-

He cut himself off once he was fully inside the living room. The coffee table had obstructed his view from the door, but from here, he could see Brennan stretched flat on the yoga mat she had rolled out on the floor.

Naked.

"The air conditioning is broken," she explained, eyes closed. "It's too hot for clothes."

He smirked. "I think I've seen this porno before."

"What porno?"

"Never mind." He tried to stretch out beside her, but she was quick to protest.

"Booth, this mat isn't meant for two people; you're too close to me." Brennan felt his hand begin to wander over her torso, and she finally opened her eyes as she pushed it away. "Stop it."

Booth stared longingly at her body. The humidity was stifling, and sex now would possibly result in heat stroke, but he just couldn't get on board with a hands-off policy when the whole hands-_on _thing was still relatively new to him.

"Why don't we go back to my apartment?"

"No!" Brennan raised herself up on her elbows and Booth very nobly tried to keep his eyes on her face. "We've been at your apartment almost half the week already, Booth!"

"Bones, it's a million degrees in here. We may die."

"We're not going to die."

She closed her eyes and lay flat on her back again, and Booth's gaze roamed her body once more.

"Two weeks here – once they fix the air conditioning – if we can just go to my place right now where I'm allowed to do more than just look at you naked," he proposed.

"Two weeks?"

"Two weeks."

"Agreed," Brennan replied immediately.


	9. Chapter 9

I know; I dropped the ball yesterday. That's my bad. Prompts still welcome! The angsty and the fluffy alike.

* * *

**Day 9: Booth. Brennan. Camping. Smores.**

"You know this isn't real camping," Brennan stated (not for the first time).

"Shh, Bones. She's having the time of her life out here."

"She's sleeping, Booth." Brennan glanced pointedly at the little girl curled up within the comically large sleeping bag between them. Then she looked over her shoulder at the house no more than twenty yards away. "We should bring her inside."

"Before the fire dies out? No way! It's against camping code."

Dew was forming on the grass around them and Brennan dried wet palms on her jeans before half-heartedly kicking dirt into the fire pit.

"Stop that."

"Do you think she's warm enough?"

"She'd probably be warmer if you'd quit trying to sabotage the damn fire."

Brennan bit back a smile and smoothed a dark curl off her daughter's forehead. "I still feel guilty," she confessed without looking at him. "This is a very poor substitute for what we had planned."

"I don't feel so great about it either," Booth answered truthfully. "But she had fun tonight, right? We're not total failures."

Christine's first camping trip hadn't gone any more according to plan than her first day of school. Or her last birthday. Or her birth, for that matter. Booth and Brennan got the call about the body before they even had a chance to get out of the driveway, and their spontaneous weekend getaway had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

"She's getting older; it's not always going to be so easy to distract her when we let her down."

He didn't answer her. He couldn't; not when he so often found himself thinking the same thing. So he changed the subject. Because sometimes making her laugh was the best he could do.

"We've still got a lot of these left." He waved the open bag of marshmallows and then threw it over to her. "Come on, Bones. You know you want to."

"I _don't _like them, Booth."

"You said you haven't tried one since you were a kid!"

"And I burned my tongue! I would really rather just eat the chocolate."

"Well you can't have the chocolate. Not without the marshmallow and the graham crackers too."

"You can be incredibly stubborn about the most ridiculous things."

She let out a low laugh that took away any sting her words may have carried otherwise, and Booth revelled in the sound. So what if they weren't out camping in the woods... they weren't at a dumpsite either. That had to count for something.

A few minutes later, Brennan shook her head and carefully placed a marshmallow on a skewer.

"I'm not doing this because you've been pressuring me all night," she protested firmly when Booth began to cheer. "I'm simply indulging mild curiosity."

Booth watched her methodically toast the marshmallow, break the chocolate, and press the whole mess together. And he found himself amazed - for the millionth time - by the concentration she put into the menial tasks as well as the complex ones.

"Well?"

"It's not terrible," she admitted.

He leaned over and bit the remainder of the warm treat right out of her hands.

"Hey!"

"I'm not going to let you eat a smore like it's work, Bones. It needed to go to someone who appreciates it."

"You could have just asked," Brennan huffed. "I would have given it to you."

"Where would the fun've been in that?"


	10. Chapter 10

I'll be honest; me and this prompt had issues. My brain just didn't want to write it. Anyway, it took four days of stalling, but I've won. Ish.

* * *

**Day 10: Brennan ninja drops Booth.**

They split up soon after they enter the pub, and in hindsight, Booth recognises this as the mistake. The _first _mistake, anyway. It doesn't take long for all the errors to begin blending together.

Brennan talks to the bartender while he wanders a few feet away to mingle with the crowd congregating around the pool tables, and things flow nicely, efficiently, until a cry of pain overrides the live band music pulsing throughout the establishment.

And everything just spirals from there.

A routine investigation turns into a brawl because some half-drunk moron picks the absolute worst day to try and play grab-ass with his partner.

It's been so long, _so long _since he's seen her turn around and punch someone, for a moment he's too stunned to do much more than stare. But then Booth sees that flash of intent to hit her back, and he's by her side at the bar in the span of a heartbeat.

(This is one of the things they argue about on the way to the hospital.

"_I was in control, Booth. I didn't need you to step in."_

She probably hadn't; he knows this. She has strength in spades and is absolutely capable of defending herself. But this doesn't mean he should be expected to just stand by and watch these scenes play themselves out. If that's too much for her to handle, then she shouldn't be getting into fights two feet away from him)

Chairs are broken. Bottles smashed. At some point, Brennan's arm gets caught by a rust coated nail. But the bigger injury that has landed them here, in the Emergency Room, is the broken wrist sustained by Booth.

By Brennan's hand.

They sit in an examination room as they wait for the x-rays to come back and confirm what they both already know. Booth stares purposefully ahead and Brennan accepts his silent treatment until he begins absently prodding his wrist, despite the pain it obviously causes him.

"Don't, Booth." She pulls away his good hand and holds it captive in her lap. When he turns his head toward her, she seizes the opportunity to apologise. Again. "I'm _sorry_. I didn't know it was you."

Neither of them is particularly good at stonewalling; they are slaves to their compulsive need to explain to the other – often in great detail – why they are the one in the right. So instead of turning his gaze back to the white wall across from them, Booth glares.

"That's why you don't just start throwing punches in a room full of people, Bones."

Brennan clenches her jaw. Because she's already apologised twice and he's lectured her three times that. He begins manipulating his arm again and though she's losing patience, she gently puts her free hand over his. "You'll make it worse."

"How? It's already broken."

"Fractured. And it's your left side," she adds helpfully. "Your writing and shooting abilities won't be compromised."

"Sometimes I shoot with my left hand."

"Only if you don't have a choice."

"I'm not going to thank you for not crippling my right hand."

"I didn't ask you to thank me."

"Is this about what Angela said earlier?" Booth blurts suddenly.

Brennan's eyes flash and she automatically sits straighter in her chair. "Excuse me?"

Booth flushes, but the question has already been put out there and he may as well see it through. "It's been a long time since you've hit somebody like that, Bones. A really long time."

"He invaded my personal space," she interrupts. "He grabbed me. It has been a long time since _that_ has happened as well."

"It's just, Angela makes a joke about you and domesticity and then a few hours later you start taking out suspects?" He shrugs. "It's like your overcompensating."

"I am secure in my role in our family," Brennan replies coolly. "And I'm equally confident that I remain exactly as competent in my field as I was prior to Christine's birth. I have nothing to _compensate_ for. You, however, have been behaving oddly since we left the lab."

He doesn't respond because he knows it's true. He knows he's been revisiting that uncomfortable state of waiting for the other shoe to drop; a state that had held him captive for so long in the beginning. 99.9 percent of the time, he is confident in this good thing that they have built with so much care. But once every blue moon there is a fleeting moment during which he finds it difficult to silence the part of him that cannot quite be convinced it will not fall apart.

Brennan's features soften as he drops his guard. "I am exactly where I want to be, Booth. All day you've been watching me as if you're waiting for me to do something irrational. It's not necessary. It's insulting, actually."

The moment of insecurity passes. He relaxes in his seat, though he notices she does not. "I know. I do know, Bones. I just... need you to remind me sometimes, I guess. I'm an idiot."

She gives him a wry smile. "I am willing to give you a 'free pass,' in light of the fact that I have caused you serious injury today."

"That sort of works out nicely. I guess."

"I really am sorry, Booth."

"We're good, Bones. We're good."


	11. Chapter 11

**Day 11: Brennan. Possibility of losing Booth in Hero in the Hold.**

They've been partners a little less than a year the first time she invites him to a function. It's almost an accident, really. He finds out about it through the Jeffersonian grapevine and he makes a nuisance of himself bringing it up every five minutes, and ultimately she extends the invitation because she doesn't actually believe he'll accept it.

It's a surprise to both of them when he does.

She's defensive when she first meets him at the hall; there's this little pang of nervousness that hits her during these banquets – a fact she absolutely does not consider sharing with Booth at this point in their relationship – and she's not sure she can adequately combat his teasing. But he doesn't tease her. He's charming and supportive and _nice _and when they make eye contact while she gives her speech on stage, a calm she can't explain spreads through her. When he gives her a little thumbs up, she manages to suppress the laugh but there's no holding back the smile.

It's a very good night.

Now, as she and Hodgins drive to the drop-off point, she feels the tips of her earrings brush against her neck and it triggers the realisation that she hadn't even asked Booth to come this time. Like breakfast and lunch and drinks at the Founding Fathers and late night takeout, award ceremonies now fall onto the ever-growing list of things they just do together.

She knows what this means. Or rather, she's beginning to fully grasp it. But now is not the time.

Booth may die. She's one of the smartest people in the world and she wouldn't have survived being abducted by the Gravedigger without Hodgins. Booth is resourceful, but he is alone. And the thought makes the world spin around her. Booth cannot create oxygen like Hodgins. Booth is alone. Booth may die.

"_The odds are not acceptable."_

"_Why?"_

"_Because we don't have Booth to help."_

Last time, he had told her that taking any of them out of the equation would have meant never finding her and Hodgins. This time, Zack is gone and Hodgins has betrayed her and she feels control slipping through her fingers. She can't make their unit _work _the way that Booth seems to so effortlessly. Booth challenges all of them and they rise to meet his ridiculous expectations for fast results, and without him, she is not grounded.

Booth is alone. Booth may die.

He is connected to all of them but somewhere, she understands that she will miss him more. That the loss may not end her completely, but the metaphoric marks will remain for as long as she breathes. She fears she will not be able to bear the weight of them.

When she spots him on the ship deck, all the emotions of the past twenty hours rush forth and slam into her chest so unexpectedly it winds her. And then she's calling him and calling him and he's not responding, and he manages to make her frustrated and a little angry even now. He could still die. He could still die right in front of her and he won't _hurry_.

She knows what it means when she can do nothing but bury her face in his shoulder once he finally climbs aboard the helicopter. She knows what it means when she finds herself searching shop after shop for a stupid belt buckle that proves surprisingly difficult to find. She knows what it means when her heart catches in response to a little wave he sends her way in a graveyard. Or rather, she's beginning to fully grasp it.

But now is not the time.


	12. Chapter 12

**Day 12: Video games rot your brain.**

"You're cheating."

"What? How am I cheating? _You're _the trained sniper."

"That has nothing to do with this! And I don't know. I don't know how, but you are. Damn it!"

Booth threw his controller onto the coffee table as Brennan killed off his character in a hail of overambitious gunfire and ungracious laughter.

"That's two games for me, Booth."

"I know, Bones."

"You've only won one."

"I'm aware of the score, okay?"

One week ago, Booth had left Brennan and Parker alone together. For two hours. He had come home to Brennan gleefully perusing the various high powered arsenals in Parker's latest video game, under the eager encouragement of his son. Two hours. In two hours, Parker had managed to reawaken every dormant bit of gun lust residing in her and successfully turned her into a raging killing machine.

"I'm very good at this."

"Stop it."

"What? I am."

"Can we do something else now?"

"But I'm enjoying this."

"I'm going to kill Parker," Booth muttered. "What the hell was he thinking."

"We were bonding, Booth. I thought you would be happy."

"I'm never happy when you're waving around a loaded gun, Bones. Never."

Brennan leaned over to playfully kiss his cheek, and then in a series of rapidly tapped movements, Booth's character was blown to pieces again.

"No! Come on!"

Booth's protest mixed with Brennan's victorious laughter. "Three. I've won three now."

"I wasn't even paying attention that time."

"I believe that's not in any way my problem."

"Video games rot your brain, you know. Hasn't anyone ever told you that before?"

"That sounds less than scientific, but it would explain why I'm doing so much better than you. You've been playing these games for a very long time."

"Funny. That's funny, Bones."

"I thought so."

She laughed again and Booth fought against his own smile. "Did Parker teach you how to do _this_?"

"Do what? No! Booth, that's not fair."

It was her turn to protest while Booth loudly celebrated his triumph. "Not bad, huh?"

"Show me," Brennan demanded.

"Not a chance."

"I would like to stop playing now."

"As soon as I start catching up to you. That's awful convenient."

"Video games rot your brain, Booth. I have your best interests in mind."

"Pick up the damn controller, Bones. We're just getting started."


	13. Chapter 13

This every day thing is just not working out for me. I swear I'm making an effort; I really, really am. I'm even trying to make them longer-ish to make up for it. It's possible though that this will be the last one I manage before the deadline. F-a-i-l-u-r-e.

* * *

**Day 13: Brennan admits to missing her mom.**

Brennan's birthday falls on a Saturday, and she wakes up to the weight of her two year old pressing down on her chest.

"Happy birthday."

Christine looks over her shoulder to her father for confirmation she's relayed the message properly; when Booth gives an encouraging smile from the corner of the room, she begins to bounce enthusiastically on her mother's ribcage.

"Oh, thank you," Brennan murmurs. She places a stabilising hand on Christine's tiny hip as her daughter slips and comes dangerously close to tumbling off the bed. "Careful."

"We made breakfast." Booth approaches the bed and dives onto it. Brennan groans as his actions draw laughter and further discomfort causing bouncing from their daughter. "Everything you like."

"Why?" she asks sleepily.

"Why? Because it's your birthday and we don't have to go to work. This is the first year I've had time to do more than throw a piece of toast at you as we run out the door. Come on; get up."

"Get up," Christine echoes.

Brennan chuckles lowly and clears her throat. "You're both very bossy."

"There's presents, too," Booth informs her. "Good ones."

"Thank you," she repeats. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and once again just-barely stops Christine from falling to the floor. "Thank you."

* * *

Booth makes a big deal out of birthdays. And Christmas. And Easter and Memorial Day and everything in between. She's learned to embrace his enthusiasm and oftentimes it proves infectious, especially since having Christine, but today the freedom of Saturday has given him the means to truly outdo himself.

The attention is overwhelming. While she can enjoy celebration in the form of dinner or drinks or the cake Angela insists be purchased to commemorate every employee in their department's 'special day,' Booth hands Christine another gift to hand to her and as she accepts the carefully – if clumsily – wrapped package, there is something about the intimacy of this scene that leaves her feeling unexpectedly unsettled.

The most frustrating part lies in her inability to pinpoint exactly _why_.

When Booth is making lunch a few hours later, he absently notes that he hadn't remembered to buy french bread while doing the grocery shopping the day before. Brennan jumps at the chance to get out of the house for five minutes and sort her thoughts.

* * *

She leaves their home fully intending to go to the store down the street, buy bread, and return immediately. Though there's a memory pulling at her _just _beyond where she can reach it, though she's frustrated, she wants to be with her family. But while she's perusing the bread options, she overhears a woman explaining to her small child her reasoning for buying multigrain bread.

The child is clearly not impressed by the logic and a great deal of whining begins. Brennan quickly makes her selection and retraces her steps back to the front of the store, but as the calm, even tone of the child's mother catches faintly in her ears, something slips into place for her.

Max talks about her mother all the time, and while Brennan generally clings to these fragments and does her best to fit them in with her own fractured memories, there are occasions when his stories – which she never _asks _him to share – only serve to make her angry. Sometimes, it still simply hurts too much to think about her childhood, and she resents that she's expected to listen to him reminisce just because it makes _him _feel better. But standing here, she remembers birthdays. She remembers her mother's indulgence of her and her brother's every whim. Booth has been going out of his way to make every second memorable for her and it takes her back to a time when she's young and special and for 24 hours, her words are law.

There's a small selection of potted plants at the checkout, and when she adds them to her purchase she again doesn't know exactly _why, _but once she's back in her car, she turns right toward the highway instead of left toward the house.

* * *

It feels silly, sitting on the cold ground in front of a marker which represents a person who has ceased to exist. Once, she had promised Booth she would visit his grave and talk to him. Even back then, she had known pretending he could hear her would provide a modicum of comfort. She knows his expressions and inflections and how he would react to almost any given thing she says or does. Her mother is a stranger. She has a handful of memories, all containing the bias of a child, and no reliable knowledge of the person her mother had really been.

She rests the flowers against the headstone. It's a tradition she still doesn't quite understand but she finds them pretty and she supposes that in itself is probably at least part of the reasoning. It's a comfort measure for the person doing the visiting, like talking aloud and pretending there's someone to hear. Bringing flowers is bringing life to a place where there is none.

She doesn't notice the changing position of the sun in the sky. She doesn't notice the rise and fall in the temperature. She's lost in her own world until she spots a pair of sneakers in her peripheral vision just before another person drops to the ground beside her.

"Hey."

"Booth! What- how did you know where to find me?"

"Angela's program," he answers sheepishly.

Her face scrunches in disapproval. "We are becoming entirely too quick to use that. It's unethical."

"Well, you went to the store to buy _one _thing five hours ago, Bones. I got worried."

Brennan instinctively reaches into her coat pocket for her phone, but she finds nothing but a pen and a pair of latex gloves. Before she can finish mentally recalculating when she had seen the device last, Booth waves it in front of her.

"Oh." It's her turn to sound sheepish.

"Oh is right. What were you thinking? Leaving it out on the front seat where anyone could take it..."

"Are many cars burglarised in cemeteries?"

"Cute. You shouldn't encourage that kind of thing, Bones. I mean the least you could have done was put it in the glove compartment."

"I thought it was in my pocket."

Booth leans back on his palms and turns his head toward the gravestone. "I mean no disrespect, Mrs. Keenan, but your daughter can be a real pain in my ass."

"I am not!" she responds indignantly, then reflexively turns to face the stone as well. "I'm _not_."

Booth chuckles, and Brennan finds her glare melting.

"That's the first thing I've said to her in all the time I've been sitting here," she confesses. "I'm not good at this, Booth."

"There's no right or wrong way, Bones. Something brought you here today... if you've found what it was you were looking for, that's all that matters."

Brennan turns this over in her mind and absently bites her lip. "I don't know what I'm looking for." Booth looks as if he intends to say something, and she rushes to get her words out first. Because she's not quite ready to talk about this. "Where's Christine?"

"In the car."

She snaps to attention, absolutely horrified until she sees the ghost of a smirk resting on his face. "Booth."

"I took her over to Angela's once I figured out where you were. She's fine."

Brennan exhales deeply. "That wasn't funny."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"My mom loved birthdays," she tells him out of the blue. "I forgot."

She turns to face him again and she waits expectantly for him to contribute something to this, but he remains quiet and eventually she continues.

"She always bought two cakes; one to eat for breakfast, _in bed_," – she giggles as if she's confessing to something especially naughty – "and then another one for after dinner."

"She loved _you_, Bones. Not birthdays."

"She made me feel like I was the most important person in the entire world," Brennan reminisces. "Like you do. Except, I know you, Booth. I didn't know her. I never did. And now she's gone."

"You have memories of her. Great ones."

"I had memories of my father, too. And the perception of him I had founded on those memories shifted drastically after he came back," she points out.

Booth can't help rolling his eyes. "Max is... well, Max. But the important things, Bones, the important things are the same. You mean the world to him."

"He doesn't _think_, Booth. Sometimes he just, he just does things and I find it bothers me more than I would like. Sometimes I still miss the version of him that I remembered before I knew him as Max. And it's foolish to dwell on it, but I'm wondering whether I would feel the same way about my mother if she had lived long enough to come back as well."

"You still love Max."

"Yes."

"And you would still love her."

"That's not the point."

"What is, then?"

"The truth. I want the truth. And I'm not going to get it from my dad, or Russ. I miss her. I miss her the way _I _remember her, and I find it unsettling that I'll never know anything else."

"The truth is, maybe she would have disappointed you," Booth shrugs. "But that wouldn't have made breakfast birthday cake any less real."

Brennan allows this to sink in and then drops her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I left my phone in the car."

"Don't worry about it, Bones. Everything turned out okay."

"And while I can acknowledge that this looks... bad, in actual fact, today has been a good day."

"That's good," he laughs softly and kisses the top of her head.

She feels a weight lift and shifts closer into her partner's side. "I'm glad you're here, Booth. I find you easier to talk to than the universe."


End file.
